


Don't know where, don't know when

by Beleriandings



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Character Study, Dancing, M/M, based on tumblr tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21651352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: Jack and Ianto, dancing. A diptych.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 12
Kudos: 86





	Don't know where, don't know when

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this tumblr textpost](https://iant0jones.tumblr.com/post/189361941619), + @iant0jones and their very good tag, "#we all know they’ve spent late nights dancing together in the Hub". I couldn't resist a short drabble, which turned into a not-so-short not-drabble.  
> 

_[Before]_

He hadn’t meant, really, to go up the stairs, nor had he meant to watch Jack in his office. But the strains of Glenn Miller coming from the one occuped room in the Hub, the glow of light at the door…he hadn’t been able to resist taking a look.

He’d never before seen Jack actually use the antiquated gramophone from the Torchwood archives, in fact he hadn’t even known there were any records around to play on it. Jack’s own collection, he supposed; all he could think was that they must have been locked in Jack’s own filing cabinet, though now they were piled up on the desk, the sleeves dusty and yellowed, curling at the corners, but still bright.

He’d been spotted watching, of course, as Jack turned away from the gramophone. A grin, playing across his face, mischief in his eyes. Ianto recognised that look.

If he’d been asked, he could definitely have predicted how this was going to go.

“Ianto! Didn’t know you were still here.”

He rocked back on his heels, hands behind his back. “I was finishing updating the records for the _Sky Gipsy_ case, sir…took a bit longer than I had anticipated. I was just getting ready to go home.” It was a familiar back and forth, by now.

Jack’s face didn’t change, but Ianto thought he saw something flicker across his gaze. He hadn’t asked exactly what had happened with John Ellis; he could guess, mostly, by the look in Jack’s eyes when he had returned Ianto’s car keys the next morning. “It certainly was a complex case.”

“Yes.”

“…Ianto.”

He looked up, knowing from Jack’s tone what was about to happen next.

Sure enough, Jack extended a hand towards him. Ianto’s eyes were drawn to the ripple of tendons and muscle at his wrist, where his sleeve was rolled up to the elbow.

“Want to stay a while?” He wiggled his fingers. “Music like this, seems a shame not to dance to it.”

He gave a wry smile, as he took Jack’s proffered hand, letting himself be pulled in close. “I suppose I can stay a _little_ while…”

Jack smiled, one arm curving around him, the fingers of his other hand entwining with Ianto’s.

And they danced, as the melody twined around them, the record player crackling behind the music.

It was…nice. A comfortable sort of peace descended on the office, the two of them dancing close together. In the morning, they could pretend this had never happened, or at the very least, had happened differently.

It took him by surprise when Jack spoke, close to his ear.

“So…where did you learn to dance?”

Ianto hesitated for a second, mind going back as he wondered what to say. Not the truth; not that he had taught himself, alone in his room based on scenes in films he had committed to memory. He had been seventeen and trying to work up the courage to ask Bethan Robinson to the sixth-form dance, because she had been so nice to him all year, which wasn’t really true of anyone else. Not that it had been worth much; she’d let him down very politely, said she was already going with Charlie Allen, who was tall and had nice curly hair and sometimes smiled at her from across their maths class, but it had been a let-down all the same, his hours of shuffling around his room in jeans and tshirt to music only he could hear all for nothing.

But he balked at the idea of recounting that story to Jack. Nor could he tell him how he’d used to sneak into Rhiannon’s room and take her Cole Porter cassettes; it wasn’t like she actually listened to them anyway, she’d only got into that sort of music for about two weeks when she was fifteen and after some boy in drama club, then gone back faithfully to the Spice Girls and S Club Seven when her brief infatuation had ended. So Ianto hadn’t really thought of it as stealing, exactly, more just…inheriting. Regardless, he’d kept them in the back of his sock drawer where his parents wouldn’t look. It wasn’t something they’d understand, anyway. Nor would they understand when he lay on his back in the middle of the floor of his room, staring at the ceiling with the foam headphones of his walkman over his ears, listening to bright saxophones or the romantic swell of violins and dreaming of a different life than his own. Brighter and shinier and more interesting, though it hadn’t really had any concrete form to it then. 

He couldn’t tell Jack any of that; it was just…embarrassing. Also, a little sad. So instead, he blurted the first half-truth he could think of.

“Lisa taught me” he said, and then immediately regretted it at the expression on Jack’s face; it didn’t so much fall, as freeze entirely still, his motions halting for just a fraction of a second.

It was sort of true, at least; Ianto and Lisa had gone to several ballroom dance classes in London, taken with the fun and glamour of it, before getting bored, and too busy with work, moving on to something else. Still, afterwards they had sometimes danced in their little kitchen, in socks that slipped across the linoleum, passing a cheap bottle of wine back and forth and giggling together when they tripped over each others’ feet.

It had been probably the happiest he’d ever been in his life, though he’d never realised it at the time; funny, how it went like that.

Then there had been Rhiannon’s wedding; he’d brought Lisa as his plus-one, the first time she’d met his family. The two of them had danced, and it had almost made up for the discomfort at having to interact with all of his own extended family and – worse - Johnny’s, all crammed into a church hall with a questionable portable disco. It had been okay, in the end, because Lisa had been there with him, an ally in all this.

But he shouldn’t have mentioned Lisa. He knew that Jack felt responsible not so much for what had happened to her, but certainly for how Ianto coped with it, watching him carefully for signs of breaking.

“Right” said Jack, casting his eyes down. But he didn’t let go, Ianto noticed. The two of them swayed across the office, the space a little too cramped for this. He looked back at Ianto, eyes meeting his. They didn’t seem to be entirely seeing him, though, as though Jack was looking back to something far in the past. There was a tiny frown line on his face. All of a sudden Ianto found himself wanting to raise a hand, to use his thumb to gently smooth the crease away. He pushed the thought down deep.

Ironic, really, when only a few nights before he’d ended up in Jack’s bed. Again. Though, of course, that was different; that wasn’t anything that mattered. It was the release they both needed, after a long day doing this job. Better with someone who understood, that was all.

Jack never told Ianto what was really bothering him, and that was the way it would always be. And that was fine.

Jack was smiling, a little; there was sadness there too, though, in the way that there sometimes was. “I always loved this one” he said. His hand felt warm and solid at Ianto’s back, drawing him close. “ _Moonlight Serenade_ … there’s something about it, you know? The nineteen forties had the best music. Something about all those men going off to war, not knowing if they’d come back. All those people left behind. A lot of last dances.”

There was something about the way he said it. Usually, when Ianto stayed late at the Hub, Jack was very careful not to let him see his melancholy moments. Usually, Ianto only got to see those in passing, or out of the corner of his eye in the times when Jack let down his guard, just a very little. And usually, he’d have Ianto pinned against a wall by now, to their mutual satisfaction.

This was something different, and he didn’t really know what.

“Would you believe it if I told you” whispered Jack, close to Ianto’s ear, “that I once danced to this song on the top of an invisible spaceship, parked right in front of Big Ben?”

“Really?” Ianto smiled against Jack’s jaw. “Didn’t know they ever let you leave Cardiff, sir.”

Jack chuckled, the sound rumbling through his chest. “It’s been known to happen. Do you believe me?”

“Which part?”

“The space ship.”

“If it was you?” He thought about it. “Yes, I don’t see why not. It’s not the strangest thing I’ve seen.”

“Well, it’s true. I danced with a beautiful young lady that I’d just saved from certain death.”

Ianto laughed. “Which movie plot did you steal this from?”

Jack pulled him in close, dipping him expertly as the music crescendoed. “So you’re saying you don’t believe me?”

Ianto stared up at Jack, meeting his eye. This, now, was familiar again. “That you can be the hero type that goes around seducing people left right and centre? I’m still sceptical. I think you’ll have to prove it to me.”

Jack grinned, pulling him up and – finally – pushing him up against the wall as the song ended, the two of them laughing over the crackle of the record, before their lips met in a kiss.

Familiar, tasting like the comfort they’d found together these last few weeks. But there was something else there now, something that hadn’t been there before.

As Jack’s hands ran up his chest, insistent on the buttons of his waistcoat, Ianto resolved to think about it later.

* * *

_[After]_

On one hand, it was still odd having Jack back. On the other, it was as though he’d never been away.

Unfortunately, the sudden nature of his arrival, and the inopportune circumstances right after, had meant that there were a few loose ends that Ianto had forgotten to tie up.

Thus, in hindsight, what happened was probably fairly inevitable.

In fact, he would think later, maybe Jack assumed he’d planned it that way from the start. He genuinely didn’t know if that was better or worse.

Because, after the two of them got back to the Hub after their dinner – not just that, it was a proper _date_ , and Ianto was still not finished mentally unpacking what that meant – they gravitated to Jack’s office. Not because an office was a normal sort of place to retire to after a date, but because, well. There wasn’t really any other possibility, the two of them being who and what they were.

They kissed slow and deep, with unaccustomed tenderness. It was different than before, he could tell already, and they’d barely begun. Ianto felt the wine that Jack had bought him at dinner had gone to his head a little, his face flushed with it. And with a quiet sort of triumph; he was having a hard time admitting it, even to himself, but there was some part of him that had been convinced that Jack wouldn’t really stay, that he’d run off with John, run off to the stars. Again.

But no: all of time and space, and he’d chosen Ianto.

He was just beginning to enjoy it, pressing Jack backwards so he was practically sitting on top of the desk with Ianto’s thigh just starting to slip between his, when Jack pulled back from him a little, meeting his eye.

“Music?” he said, slipping out of Ianto’s grasp. He went over to the gramophone, adjusting the horn as he looked through the stack of records.

As a frown appeared on his face, Ianto, belatedly, realised his mistake.

“Wait a second” said Jack. “These aren’t in the same order they were when I last - ” Ianto, internally, cringed a little as he watched Jack make the connection, looking at Ianto, then at the records, then back at Ianto again.

Slowly, he picked up the one of the top of the pile. “ _We’ll Meet Again_. Vera Lynn.” There was an odd expression on his face. “Don’t remember listening to this in a while.”

“Well, uh” said Ianto, forcing himself to keep a straight face, as in his mind he returned to the last few months, the difficult ones in which he had had to adjust to life without Jack. There wasn’t much he could say in his defense; mourning the loss of a man you just found out couldn’t die was a tricky sort of process, especially when one factored in the great, all-encompassing and heartbreakingly gentle _something_ that had started to rise in Ianto’s chest whenever he thought about Jack of late. His shoulders slumped. “Suppose it’s pointless to pretend it was one of the others listening to it.”

“Gotta admit, I’d be very disappointed if it was” said Jack, something in his voice as he took the record out of its sleeve and set it on the turntable, placing the needle carefully down. It started, with a scratchy sound from which came the opening notes of the song. He looked right at Ianto, holding out a hand to him. “I like it better if it’s you.”

Ianto took his hand, because it was all he could do; all of this was uncharted territory, and he had the sense that whatever this was between the two of them, it was never going to be going back to the sort of unspoken arrangement they had before. Nor, he realised, did he want it to. Jack’s hand was warm in his, as he pulled him in to dance.

Ianto laid his head against the solidity of Jack’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of him – still the same, still familiar, even after god only knew where he’d been – and let himself be glad that time and space was exactly how it was, no more, no less. That in a universe of so many goodbyes, of so many people that left and never came back, of so many broken hearts, that the probabilities had played out just right to allow Jack not only to meet him at all – separated by birth and by millennia and endless, intergalactic space – but also, to come back.

No, he realised, as the song came to an end. No, it wouldn’t be the same as it had been before. But he didn’t want it to be. Because he knew it would be so much better.

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: this fic now has [a beautiful illustration of Ianto and Jack dancing](https://aellesiym.tumblr.com/post/618275694501363712/illustrated-a-lil-scene-from), by @aellesiym on tumblr!


End file.
